SAN FRANCISCO, March 1 — Operators in the MUNI transit system, members of Transport Workers Union (TWU) Local 250a, bucked the national trend of accepting concessions negotiated by union mis-leaders. Almost 60% rejected a union leadership demand that we give back $14 million over two years. The TWU leadership’s newsletter boasted, “We are part of the solution” while admitting to “have already given up over $4.5 million in salary savings due to service cuts and other give-backs.” Momentarily, the TWU leadership has lost its ability to sell “deals” with the ideology of fear, as it collaborates with the city’s ruling class to justify cutbacks.
Following the rejection, operators blocked both a “revote” and hiring an “insider operative from SF Mayor Newsom” for an expensive PR campaign. Instead, they’re organizing a drive to directly reach out to passengers through protests, on the buses and at public meetings. They’re uniting with California public workers on March 4.
A Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) February 28 hearing reflected an atmosphere of class war, with operators and passengers exposing the racist and anti-working-class proposed cuts.
‘No time to breathe...’
In an interview, one operator declared: “Did you blame the tellers when the banks” crashed? Others commented, “The government bails out the rich Bank of America which is foreclosing on our homes — operators should not bail out MUNI”; “The banks created this, let them solve it!” Another said MUNI had “to reach out to transit workers throughout California.” Others spoke about how the Schedule cuts “rob me of my humanity, no time to pick up the seniors, go to the bathroom, or even breathe.” Some operators advocated job actions — sick-outs, work-to-rule slowdowns and ultimately strikes.
Leaflets circulated opposing the union-leadership strategy of “giving up,” demanding that the downtown big business community handle their deficit by paying the Transit Impact Fee. PLP members circulated CHALLENGE articles and leaflets with a class analysis of the transit industry.
Weeks of calculated, racist vilification of the workers ensued in the mass media, among politicians, think-tanks, and the SF MTA (which runs MUNI). Since the ‘60s, driving for MUNI was identified as a “black job.” Now, there are many immigrant workers. In this context, calling paid medical benefits for family members “an undeserved bonus” encourages the idea that these workers are “undeserving.”
• SFMTA president Nolan threatened to double the cost of discounted monthly passes for seniors, the disabled and youth and cut service 10%, without the workers’ give-backs. Ultimately, the discounts were saved but Noland demanded more concessions from workers. Service cuts impact poorer, isolated, black and Latino neighborhoods and predominately their youth the most as resources are concentrated on rush-hour service.
• “The first and foremost concern for MUNI should be ‘labor reform,’” said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of the think-tank SPUR” (SF Chronicle, 2/8), meaning less for workers’ wages and benefits, and more speed-up.
• Metcalf and Supervisor Sean Elsbernd called for part-timing driver jobs because they “just sit around doing nothing and get paid” in mid-day (more thinly-veiled racism).
• Elsbernd is using the Ballot Initiative process to mobilize the public against drivers with a Charter amendment to change the process determining drivers’ wages and benefits.
The political direction in this fight to “make the Downtown bosses pay” and for passenger-worker unity comes from the intertwining of communist organizing over many years at MUNI and mass anger among operators over this new stage of attacks on unionized workers. First the bosses decimated manufacturing as an entry-level job (without college). Now it’s dismantling public-sector jobs like transit with the “deficit” justification that “there’s no money.”
Communists have named the cause — capitalism — during 40 years of class struggle in transit combined with ideological agitation and education. Communists expose the system as one based on competition for maximum profits that motivates these bankers\CEOs, not personality, greed or political party. Inter-imperialist rivalry (capitalists of different nations competing for world domination) is part of the engine of capitalism that drives the deficit. PLP has advanced communist class consciousness over many years at MUNI. That means:
• Uniting with other workers, rejecting the “PR” approach, and going directly to the working-class public; unity with other transit workers; recognizing that our labor creates profits for the Downtown bosses; and job actions can bring them to a halt.
• Recognizing a capitalist class and system dictates this crisis; therefore, they should pay for it.”
• Viewing capitalism as a whole system; the same banks that caused the attacks on our jobs have also foreclosed our houses, cut education, increased medical expenses and the war budget.
• Organizing against U.S. imperialism; opposing the trillions spent on oil wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and seeing U.S. corporate robbery worldwide as directly hurting U.S. workers.
A friend told people of the impact of communists in the class struggle: “In a washing machine, you have the water, the soap and the clothes but if you don’t have the agitator, you can’t get the dirt out.” Someone else declared, “I’ve heard all this from you before, but now it’s clear what you were talking about.” CHALLENGE distribution and its content played a central role in this ideological struggle, with follow-up and study groups having a critical imapact.
To escalate this battle, we need more communists to make all these connections among our coworkers. Strictly focusing on “just surviving this budget deficit”, as the union leadership does, will not prepare us for the battles ahead as the U.S. capitalist class tries to save itself by destroying workers’ living standards. During this long process, U.S. capitalism’s decline will draw more workers into harder fights. Communists in PLP are in the fight. We will advance the long-term strategy of overthrowing capitalism and constructing a society where transit jobs serve the working class and fulfill many drivers’ aspirations for meaningful work; schedules will be about taking workers where they need to go, not delivering a workforce for the profit needs of the Downtown bosses.
(Next: Communism as a solution to serve the working class in transit.)
